Wednesday, November 30, 2005

The Secrets of Making Great Guitar Recordings

By: George Nellas

Not every guitarist records. In fact, most guitarists will nevermake a recording of themselves. However, many of the burdensassociated with the task of recording have been, in recentyears, pushed aside. In the past, it was necessary to assemblean entire team of people to make recordings. You had to have oneor two engineers, usually a producer, several band members andgenerally a few hangers-on who just wanted to get in on theaction. As technology has increased, the amount of laborassociated with recording has decreased, along with the numberof people needed to produce recordings.

For most guitarists who want to record, especially in a homestudio, the recording environment will consist of three primarythings: the guitar, the amplifier or direct device, and therecording device. All three of these are of equal importance inproducing quality guitar recordings.

First, you must make sure that your guitar is of quality and ingood working condition. If you're not up to the challengeyourself, take it to a quality repairperson who will be able tomake sure that your string heights are adjusted correctly, theaction is comfortable and that your electronics are in workingorder and free of buzzing and other electrical noise.

Second, the amplifier or direct interface. More and more thesedays, guitar recordings are made with direct recordinginterfaces, such as the Line6 POD. These types of devices can begreat time-savers in the studio and, more and more, can offeryou a tone equivalent to or better than a traditional amplifiedsignal. If you're more of a purist, make sure that you have aquality microphone to pick up the signal from your amplifier(the standard is a Shure SM57) and that your signal is free frominterference. This means making sure that your amplifier,microphone and microphone cables are free of buzzing and thatall fluorescent lights in the recording environment are turnedoff. Fluorescent lights, although great energy-saving devices,reflect up to sixty percent of their energy back into thesystem. If an amplifier or loudspeaker is hooked up to thesystem, a beautiful 60-cycle hum ensues, ensuring that whateverrecordings you make are utterly useless.

Third, the recording device. For most of us these days, ourprimary recording device is a home computer. Macintosh has beenthe industry standard for years, but most PC makers have revvedup their models enough (and made them crash-free enough, thankyou very much) so, although the majority of studios still useMacs, the only real difference is your personal preference.Whatever type of computer you decide to purchase, however, makesure that you max it out with speed and memory.

Although many computer programs and direct recording deviceswill have some pretty good-sounding presets, to get originaltones, make sure that you experiment and try to come up withsomething that sounds original. Many presets are loaded withgain and effects to make them sound impressive to first timehearers. Remember, a whole lot of great guitar sounds have beenrecorded with a minimal amount of distortion, and effects canalways be added later, so don't risk screwing up a great take bycommitting your effects to tape right away, without being sureof the tone that you're going for.

Good Luck!

About the author:You can find more information about guitars, recording andrecording techniques at http://www.guitar-4u.com/.